


An Unfortunate Incident Involving a Train

by sparrowshift



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Series of Unfortunate Events, Blackmail, Child Abandonment, Everyone Needs Therapy, Excruciatingly Observant Kylo Ren, F/M, Foster Care, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo is Count Olaf, Possessive Kylo Ren, Rey is Violet, bad foster care experiences, brat/brat tamer dynamics, but a bit less squicky, but also Rey doesn't care that much about said blackmail, but he's also not going to hurt her in this fic, but they're not going to get it, he's working on stealing Rey's fortune, parent and guardian death, rey is 21
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:21:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29446224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshift/pseuds/sparrowshift
Summary: When Rey Palpatine turned eighteen, she never expected to see Count Kylo Ren (her nemesis hell-bent on stealing her fortune) again. But now he’s back. And apparently he wants to take her on vacation.Rey knows he’s probably plotting again. But luckily for him, she has nothing better to do. And frankly, she could use some excitement.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 28
Kudos: 99





	An Unfortunate Incident Involving a Train

In her extremely unfortunate twenty-one years of life, Rey Palpatine had learned two things. 

One: most people would, eventually, in the natural course of things, leave her. Her parents had been the first, abandoning her at a fire station in a carpetbag. Then the orphanage nuns had abandoned her by allowing a random stranger — claiming to be her grandfather Palpatine — to take her away. And then “grandpapá” died, which Rey supposed wasn’t his fault, but he hadn’t exactly been present with all his “business trips” anyway. And finally, a series of guardians with shorter and shorter guardianship-spans lost their homes in fires, or died of mysterious illnesses or animal bites, or otherwise decided they could no longer deal with a girl who carried misfortune around her like a plague. 

Two: the only person who would never, ever ride off into the sunset was her nemesis. In this case, nemesis is a word that means “Count Kylo Ren, the very person she loathed the most in the world, who would do anything to get his hands on the Palpatine fortune, using actions up to and including forgery, blackmail, poaching rare orchids, and murder.” 

Rey was pretty certain he wasn’t even a count. Did counts even exist these days? 

At least he wasn’t one for monologuing. She glanced over at the loathsome man himself. He sat across from her on the seat of the cramped private train compartment, reading a book on constrictors of South America. Which was extremely insensitive given what happened to guardian #3. Not that he cared. He looked a strange mix of overly-casual and overly-formal: black suit, expensive wristwatch, slightly rumpled hair, lounging on the seat with his book. 

The man had absolutely no sense of dressing for the occasion. Train travel was not a black-tie affair. 

He was ignoring Rey completely. 

Which, for some reason, irked her. Even though she should be glad she didn’t have to speak to him. 

She _was_ glad. 

Her teeth worried at her bottom lip. Outside the window, the landscape was flat: field, field, silo, field. 

“Ten hours, hm?” she said, faking a casual yawn and watching him out of the corner of her eye. “Haven’t you ever heard of budget airlines?”

It was a blatant attempt to needle him, to remind him of the Palpatine fortune that still eluded his grasp. But he didn’t take the bait. 

“You like trains,” he said absent-mindedly, turning a page. 

Well. He was right, though Rey would never admit it to him: she _did_ like trains. She liked the naked machinery of the wheels, the way she could feel each bump on the track. Much better than flying. Rey _respected_ airplanes — she was an engineering student, she knew and trusted the science. But the people-element of planes: that made her more nervous. Trust issues, etc. 

Not that she had ever fully expressed this to anyone. Not even to Finn, her best friend. 

And yet _this_ man still knew. 

That was the thing with Ren. He had probably spent hours plotting her likes and dislikes. Probably spent hours with those stupid giant fingers probing a tiny model replica of a train track. Rey’s guardian of the hour would have been crushed under the wheels, of course. 

Or he had saved the knowledge for this day. When just being on a train she liked would make her more pliant. Less likely to fuss. 

How dare he think he knew fuck all about her. 

“I’m getting a drink,” she said, standing up. 

He was on his feet in an instant, blocking the door. The book fell from his hands onto the seat. Rey walked right up to him, closer than she meant to in her determination. Her nose almost brushed his chest as she came to a halt. 

“Please,” she said dismissively, eyes focusing on the fabric of his shirt, “you think I’m somehow going to escape a moving train? It’s the express from here: no stops.” 

Ren didn’t say anything. He just stood there with the brick wall of his body. 

“I agreed to come,” she reminded him, looking up at him. 

Their eyes met; his gaze was stony. She breathed. 

The train rattled along. 

Rey wasn’t sure why her heart was pounding. Fear. _Definitely_ fear. Quite rational of her too, what with their history of plotting and plotted-against. He was so close to her. And he was much larger than her too, and stronger — he could pin her to the train seat — use his tie to bind her down — _fuck fuck fuck_ — she could feel her face begin to heat — adrenaline, probably — 

But then he only nodded curtly. He stood aside so she could squeeze past him. And she did, stumbling past the compartment threshold right as the train hit a bump. 

She hoped the air outside the cramped compartment would help her catch her breath. And her heart _was_ slowing down. Of course, it would: Rey was slightly further away from his clutches. She could feel safer. Good. Excellent, even. 

Why, then, did she feel a twinge of disappointment? 

Drink first. No point in analyzing that without a drink in hand. She was on holiday, might as well start acting like it. 

The bar car was a sad affair. Her heel crunched over a wrapper as she walked in. Every surface, she suspected, was vaguely sticky. Nevertheless, she grabbed the edge of the counter and gave the bartender a winning smile as she ordered the pinkest, frothiest, sweetest monstrosity from the limited selection. It came with ice, and a squiggly straw, and a little umbrella, even though neither their place of departure nor their destination was tropical. 

Rey chewed on the straw as she looked out the window. She was sitting at one of the high tables abutting the said window, presumably so the passengers could enjoy the views of the grim factories now rolling by. Rey didn’t particularly enjoy the view or the drink. Her instinct would normally be to get the alcohol into her system as quickly as possible, but as soon as the drink was gone she wouldn’t have an excuse to linger, and people waiting for a seat by the window would start to give her dirty looks. She would have to return to that stuffy compartment and Ren. 

So she nursed the drink, grimacing. It tasted like cough syrup. 

She shouldn’t have agreed to come. 

_You didn’t have a choice, Rey, he was blackmailing you._ But that wasn’t really true. Yes, he had threatened to speak up about that nasty incident with Guardian #4, but Rey thought that was a weak move. _He_ had been involved as much as she had, and she had been a poor impressionable minor. She didn’t feel threatened by that particular secret. 

And she didn’t feel threatened by the way he had found her outside her last class of the quarter, either. Surprised, maybe. She hadn’t seen him since she had turned eighteen. He looked the same as ever: large, dark, face revealing nothing. 

And she didn’t feel threatened when he grabbed her wrist to keep her from walking away on the lawn outside the lecture hall — not bruising, just firm — but still unexpected, the warmth of his broad fingers sending heat straight to her cu— 

She sucked down a much-needed dose of the drink, bit her tongue until she tasted copper. 

As she was saying. Not threatened. 

So it hadn’t been the blackmail that made her agree to come on a holiday of her nemesis’ design for questionable reasons. Ren needed her, or so he told Rey on the lawn as students streamed by, giving them a wide berth. Something about acquaintances, something about socializing — Rey hadn’t been listening that hard, her mind had been working. She had been trying to figure out his larger plot. Because there was always a larger plot with Ren. 

Not threatened. 

Rey had just been _bored._

For years, her life was exciting. Terrible, yes, but exciting. And then she turned eighteen, and then nineteen, and it was lecture halls, and tests, and college parties, and roommates. She had even made _friends._ She was looking for jobs after graduation, right on schedule. It was all unbelievably dull. And Finn was meeting Rose’s family this break, so she wouldn’t even have him to soften the din of her own loneliness in the abandoned dorms. 

Ren brought the promise of excitement, of adrenaline rushing through her veins. No doubt the same instinct that encouraged divers to swim through tight, deadly underwater caves. The thrilling promise that she might get to be in _danger_ again. 

This was all something she should probably talk about in therapy, she thought grimly. Something else to add to the list: “to be addressed.” Eventually. No therapy yet for Rey. She was trying to keep a tight grip on her money until she turned 25. Grandpapá’s will specified that she couldn’t access the full Palpatine inheritance until then. Or until she was married, a weird little stipulation she tried not to think about. Rey was not getting married as long as she lived. Too messy. 

Anyway, she had never been to the mountains. So that part might also be nice. 

Her eyes slid away from the window and around the bar. A harried mother was trying to get her child to eat a saltine, which the child apparently both wanted and detested. Every time the cracker left his chubby hand or entered his mouth, he wailed harder. An elderly couple poured over a creased tourist pamphlet as though it were an ancient artefact. And then, something more interesting: a group of boys, possibly her age with identical close haircuts. And one of them, the most blandly handsome, had just made eye contact with her. 

Rey knew she looked good. She had been hoping to destabilize Ren by dressing half-”sexy,” half-”schoolgirl he used to know.” Daringly short polka-dot dress with a Peter Pan collar, thigh-high socks, tight boots that highlighted her calves. She had regretted it as soon as she stood shivering at the station, however. Ren hadn’t even glanced at her. Instead, he focused on a boring recitation of their trip schedule and the minutiae of boarding the train. It had been a long shot, she told herself, swallowing an odd bitterness in her throat as he droned. Ren had only ever looked at her like a man calculating stock values in his head. 

At least the outfit seemed to be doing her some good now. She offered a shy smile to the boy, then placed the straw in the corner of her mouth and sucked coyly. He muttered something to his slightly-less-bland-looking friend, then stood up and swaggered toward her. 

_Bingo._ The drink was doing nothing for her, but maybe some train sex would lift her spirits. 

“Hey,” Rey said, trying to sound whispery and sultry. 

“Hey,” the boy replied, grinning. 

Ten minutes later, Rey was stirring her drink with her straw and trying to figure out how to hurry him along. He was _very_ interested in giving her in-depth skiing advice. So unnecessary — didn’t her boots and slightly parted legs and hand on his arm say _fuck me_? She was about to go all out and just offer to blow him in the bathroom when she felt a familiar prickling at the back of her neck that could only mean one thing: Ren. 

“I don’t think we’ve met,” her greatest enemy-turned-cockblocker said, slinging an arm over Rey’s shoulder as he proffered a hand. “I’m Kylo. Miss Palpatine’s… partner.” He was getting his giant shadow all over the boy’s drink menu, for fuck’s sake. 

The boy stuttered out a name (Rey immediately forgot it) as Ren gripped his fingers with no doubt crushing strength. The boy then rambled out an excuse as he backed away. Ren slid into the now-empty seat beside her, releasing her shoulder as he did so. 

“Thanks for that,” Rey sniped. 

“You’re welcome.” He said placidly, a word which here means “as though he were doing Rey a favour, instead of ruining her chance to have sex on her holiday, which was her God-given right as a twenty-something young woman.” Then, to add insult to injury, he added: “You should be careful with cocktails: you’re allergic to mint.” 

“You’re infuriating,” she told him, taking a deep swig of her drink. Just in case it _did_ have a touch of mint. Just so that she could crunch the ice in a way she hoped aggravated him. “My “partner”? Did it ever occur to you that I _wanted_ to talk to him? Wanted to _fuck_ him?” 

Her words — the _fuck_ — hung in the air. Ren’s eyes flashed, but only for an instant. Then, softly: “He wouldn’t give you what you need.” 

His voice was so low Rey almost missed it through the sound of her own teeth crunching. But she heard. She stopped crunching. The ice melted in her mouth. She swallowed. 

"And what," she said, voice steady to conceal the way her mind flailed like a fish on a hook, "do I need?"

He looked at her face for a long time. And then, his gaze flitted to the unbuttoned collar of her dress, travelled down to the bare strip of skin between her short skirt and knee-high socks. He looked at her face again. He reached over to take a sip of her ridiculously sweet drink — without permission! Without breaking his gaze! 

"Discipline," he said finally. And — though the man never, ever smiled — Rey thought she could see the slightest smirk at the corner of his lips. 

_Just a few more hours on the train,_ Rey thought. _Just a few hours, and you can lose him in the fucking woods while you enjoy your break._

But every inch of her clothes felt tight and hot. 

Deep down, she knew she wouldn’t run. Because she was a fool. Because after all this time in danger, she had never learned to run away. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sparrowshift?s=09) if you prefer update notifications that way.


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